News Digest

'It's a miracle': Seven-year-old girl walks away from plane crash that killed four

A seven-year-old girl survived a plane crash that killed four people - and wandered from the wreckage to raise the alarm, U.S. police said. The light aircraft came down in a heavily wooded area of Lyon County, in western Kentucky. A resident called officers when the distraught girl walked to his home and told him she had been in a plane crash. Larry Wilkins, 71, told NBC News he was watching TV when he heard a knock at the door.

She was bleeding pretty bad, her legs were bleeding, her face had a bloody nose. She told me that her mum and her dad were dead, and she was in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down.

Larry Wilkins, who helped the girl after the crash

The Piper PA-34 reported engine trouble and lost contact with air traffic controllers while flying over southwestern Kentucky at 6 p.m. on Friday. Kentucky State Police said Marty Gutzler, 49, Kimberly Gutzler, 45, their nine-year-old daughter Piper Gutzler, and her 14-year-old cousin Sierra Wilder died in the crash. All four were from Nashville. Sergeant Dean Patterson, from Kentucky State Police, said: “This girl came out of the wreckage herself and found the closest residence and reported the plane crash. It’s a miracle in a sense that she survived it, but it’s tragic that four others didn’t.” The girl was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

She was of course crying a little bit. But she was coherent and pretty poised for a 7-year-old girl who had just gotten out of a plane crash.

Wilkins, in an interview with Yahoo News